19 December 2011

Facebook Threatens to Sue Mark Zuckerberg

In response to an ongoing legal battle with the social networking giant Facebook, Rotem Guez, an Israeli entrepreneur changed his name to Mark Zuckerberg.

This dispute started when Guez launched ‘Like Store’, the store which sells advertisers Likes for their Pages. Like store is the company which promises to give companies a boost in traffic by offering Facebook users free content only if they Like a given company’s page. As his startup does not come under the terms of services of the Facebook, the company wants to shut it down. Guez admits that his company’s service violates the terms of services of Facebook, but claimed that many firms in U.S. provides similar services.

Guez sued Facebook on January 29th this year. This lawsuit was filed against Facebook’s local affiliate in Israel, named Nana 10 MASA. Facebook was accused of not returning Guez’ Facebook profile for no ‘apparent, legitimate reason’. Facebook banned the Israeli entrepreneur from its website for selling Likes and creating fake accounts and warned him not to return to the social networking site for any reason.

He went to the Ministry of Home Affairs on December 7, 2011, and changed his identification to Mark Zuckerberg in the passport. The main intention for him to change his name was to see if Facebook continuous to threaten and sue Mark Zuckerberg in spite of the publicity. ZD Net reports that Rotem thinks he stands more of a chance as a Zuckerberg than a Rotem Guez. Rotem Guez, just to acquire the publicity, told the Facebook that if at all they want to sue him, they are going to sue Mark Zuckerberg.

According to the report, Facebook again started threatening him with a lawsuit on December 14th, just one week after he had changed his name. Facebook has also stopped Guez’s account on the site that he had created using the name of Mark Zuckerberg.